Elon Musk Wants to Add a Retro Drive-In Restaurant to a Tesla Charging Station

Given that he spends his days dreaming up ways to revolutionize everything from solar panels to space travel, calling Elon Musk a renaissance man is already an understatement. But if a recent tweet is true, it sounds like the Tesla CEO and professional multihyphenate is looking to add restaurateur to his lengthy list of titles. Over the weekend, Musk floated the idea of turning one of Tesla’s L.A.-area supercharging stations into an old-school drive-in, offering a way for owners of the electric car to juice up while chowing down on food delivered by a roller-skating wait staff.

Though it sounds like an off-the-cuff musing, it turns out Tesla’s been thinking about getting into the restaurant game for longer than you’d think. Company CTO J.B. Straubel spoke at a restaurant industry conference last year about Tesla’s desire to provide typical rest-stop amenities at the electric automaker’s network of 1,130 supercharger stations, mentioning that Tesla has “already been working with restaurants” to bring some sort of dining concept to life.

It makes perfect sense if you think about it: Tesla drivers have to wait at least half an hour to charge up low batteries, and concept drawings show that these supercharging stations already bear a certain architectural similarity to the carport drive-ins of old—albeit with some 21st-century solar paneling. Musk seemed ready to double down on the retro-futuristic aesthetic in follow-up tweets, mentioning menus that pop up on the Tesla’s center touch screen as soon as you pull in and a movie screen playing “a highlight reel of the best scenes in movie history.” So, the question begs to be asked: Will we see Guy Fieri pulling up to an L.A.-area drive-in in a Model 3 in the near future? With Elon Musk, you just never know.